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Senators Push To Preserve NSA Phone Surveillance
cold fjord writes "The New York times reports that the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Vice Chairman, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), are moving a bill forward that would 'change but preserve' the controversial NSA phone log program. Senator Feinstein believes the program is legal, but wants to improve public confidence. The bill would reduce the time the logs could be kept, require public reports on how often it is used, and require FISA court review of the numbers searched. The bill would require Senate confirmation of the NSA director. It would also give the NSA a one week grace period in applying for permission from a court to continue surveillance of someone that travels from overseas to the United States. The situation created by someone traveling from overseas to the United States has been the source of the largest number of incidents in the US in which NSA's surveillance rules were not properly complied with. The rival bill offered by Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Udall (D-CO) which imposes tougher restrictions is considered less likely to pass."
It would be no great surprise if voting on this bill went along the same lines as the congressional vote on reining in "the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 'no' voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 'yes' voters."
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Good luck firing them, though.
.sigs: Just Say No!
I got my perspective adjusted for me a few years ago when getting off an international flight in Miami. Three large policemen in body armor with assault rifles and with one of the most vicious looking black dog I have ever seen, standing at a "choke point" in the tunnels that lead from the plane to immigration. They stood in such a way that you had to pass near the dog, either on the right or the left.. And I thought to myself - this is the "new" America. Well I haven't been back. I plan on actively avoiding it if I can. They can dick around with other people.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A police state isn't made by border guards, which is what those police were, but by how the state deals with its citizens on a day to day basis.
Spying on them like a Stasi wet dream, searching them on a whim, either making them protest in "free speech zones" or having the media look away while the cops rush in to clear them, militarized police forces doing SWAT raids for nonviolent offenses or clearing houses door to door if there's a TERR'IST on the loose, temporarily detaining cryptographers and foreign politicians who stand up to the state or are friends with whistleblowers...
Totally not a police state. Goddamn now that I write that I'm second-guessing my 2015 vacation plans even more...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Senator Feinstein believes the program is legal, but wants to improve public confidence.
That made me chuckle. Sorry Senator, once you've been caught hiding things people are going to think you are still hiding things even if you're not. That's how the loss of trust works. You see, we don't trust you or the NSA anymore. As a wise man once said, fool me once shame on you, fool me can't get fooled again. So there will be no improvement of confidence amongst thinking people. The NSA spies on us and lied about it. It will take a long time of explicit good behavior for us to trust you or NSA again. And we all know that's not going to happen.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)